Re: [platform-core-dev] org.eclipse.core.runtime.Path issue with colons

[Ed Warnicke <eaw@xxxxxxxxx>]

OK, let me see if I understand correctly:

1)    IPath provides segmented paths, for this purpose we
      need a path separator character.
2)   We disqualify from path segments all characters that
     are used as path separators on known platforms
     ('/' and '\\') whether they are path seperators on the
     running platform or not so that in the event that
     someone incorrectly hard codes a literal (as opposed
     to using System.getProperty("path.separator")).
3)   In order to support the drive letter feature on Windows
     (and I've still seen no other rationale) we need a
     driver separator character (hard coded as ':').  We therefore
     disqualify the character ':' whether the platform we are on
     has driver letters or not.
4)   This causes breakage because it invalidates path segments
      that are perfectly valid on POSIXs compliant platforms
      (pretty much everything but Windows).
5)   Because this behavior is part of a published interface we
     are not going to fix it.

Is this an accurate summary of the situation?

This problem has been open for almost 2 years now... it's only going to
get more painful to fix going forward.  I'm willing to do the work to 
fix it,
but not if I'm just going to be shutdown for trying to change a 'published
interface' even if that interface is broken.

Ed

P.S. The leading and trailing whitespace limitations in 
IPath.isValidSegment
will also disqualify perfectly valid path segments:
hagbard@eaw-linux:~$ find bar -print
bar
bar/ foo
bar/ foo /stuff

This should also be addressed.


John Arthorne wrote:

> See IPath.isValidPath and IPath.isValidSegment.
>
> John.
> --
>
> Ed Warnicke wrote on 08/31/2004 03:37:25 PM:
>
> > Could you point me to the API spec for IPath that indicates that ':' 
> and
> > '\\' aren't valid path segment characters?